WEI Fanjie of Shanghai Future Industry Fund: Innovation Surges: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem to Drive "Chinese Innovation" | WISE2025 Business King

From November 27th to 28th, the 36Kr WISE 2025 Business King Conference, hailed as the "annual technology and business trendsetter," was held at the Conduction Space in the 798 Art District in Beijing.

This year's WISE is no longer a traditional industry summit but an immersive experience centered around "technology-driven short dramas." From AI reshaping the boundaries of hardware to embodied intelligence opening the door to the real world; from the globalization of brands in the wave of going overseas to traditional industries equipping with "cyber prosthetics" - what we present is not only trends but also the insights honed through numerous business practices.

In the following content, we will dissect the real logic behind these "blockbuster dramas" frame by frame and explore the unique business landscape of 2025.

Wei Fanjie, General Manager of Shanghai Future Industry Fund

The following speech content is from Wei Fanjie, General Manager of Shanghai Future Industry Fund, and has been organized by 36Kr -

Shanghai established a large mother fund this year called the Shanghai Future Industry Fund. We are exploring new ways to promote early-stage investment and incubation. This year, we have been quite active in the market, investing in more than 20 GPs in total, and direct investment is also in progress, especially in some cutting-edge fields.

Recently, the Shanghai Future Industry Fund has been building a community, aiming to create an innovative ecosystem through the linkage between the community and the fund from the perspective of the mother fund. Next, I would like to share our practices with you.

We have made a lot of cutting-edge investments in future industries. Last year, we invested in a large nuclear fusion project, which was launched in Shanghai. In the first round, the company raised more than 10 billion yuan.

We believe that innovation has shortened the distance between science and engineering. Ten years ago, it was unimaginable for the nuclear fusion field to raise so much money at once, and all from market-oriented funds. However, especially this year, the financing in the nuclear fusion field in Shanghai has been very active. There are new projects emerging every month, including in the field of quantum computing.

Another significant change is in education. We have started to invest in entrepreneurs born in the 2000s or around 1997 - 1998. Some young star entrepreneurs in the market have also raised a large amount of money. For many of the most outstanding people, school education has become very flat. We think the impact on education in the future will be significant.

When we promoted the establishment of the nuclear fusion ecosystem in Shanghai last year, we conducted a lot of analysis. Why is the disruptive innovation in future industries iterating so rapidly? We think there are four reasons:

Government support innovation. We recently studied the development process of some nuclear fusion startups in the United States. In fact, the U.S. DOE provided a lot of support. The government is supporting the incubation of cutting-edge fields from an investor's perspective.

Technology company iteration. A major reason is the pursuit of flat organizational structures and rapid iteration. Many startups in fields such as nuclear fusion and commercial space are adopting new organizational frameworks.

Venture capital incubation of innovation. Venture capital has various structures, and it provides greater support for the transformation of cutting-edge fields.

Artificial intelligence catalysis. This is common knowledge, so I won't elaborate.

These four reasons are also the original intention of establishing the Shanghai Future Industry Fund, a mother fund. We hope to promote the transformation of achievements in more cutting-edge fields in China, the very fields mentioned earlier.

Currently, we are actually a fund plus a community, and this community is a non - profit organization.

At present, the Shanghai Future Industry Fund has a scale of 15 billion yuan, and the paid - in capital has reached 11 billion yuan. So this year, we should be the most active mother fund for angel and VC investments in China. The fund has a very long term, 5 + 10+3, which is 18 years. So we have enough patience to promote the transformation of cutting - edge fields.

In terms of direct investment, we focus on the 0 - 1 stage. Last month, we invested in 10 projects, mainly covering nuclear fusion, quantum, brain - computer interface, celestial computing, etc., mostly in the first two rounds and in relatively new fields.

Starting from the ecosystem of the mother fund, we are building a top - notch talent community. There are three types of people in the community: scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors. We want to connect them through our methods.

In addition, we strongly support cross - disciplinary, cross - field, and cross - platform exchanges. For example, in Shanghai, we are vigorously promoting the intersection of cutting - edge fields such as AI for fusion and AI for quantum. We believe that this will generate a lot of valuable new ideas.

Overall, from the perspective of the mother fund, we support the following types of people: Firstly, scientists with entrepreneurial potential. We have a very powerful strategic scientist committee, which includes many well - known academicians, young scientists on the front line with a strong understanding of the industry, as well as entrepreneurs with a scientific spirit. Secondly, investors with a strong scientific spirit, which we are most familiar with. Thirdly, we hope to support young people.

The Shanghai Future Industry Fund is also promoting an initiative, which is to encourage the emergence of several institutions in China similar to Flagship that are capable of investing in science. So we are using some methods, including a profit - sharing mechanism, to encourage institutions to invest in earlier - stage science. We think the greatest advantage of Flagship is that it brings together scientists, various CXOs, venture capital, and various external cooperation networks within a single institution. We hope to build an enabling platform from the perspective of the mother fund.

In terms of investment directions, we hope to leave our mark in certain areas. For example, in nuclear fusion investment, we are currently the most influential investment institution in China. Most new startups in the nuclear fusion field in China will come to us. In addition, we are also vigorously promoting the AI for Science community. Through the construction of the community, we can facilitate cross - disciplinary exchanges in AI for Science and generate new projects.

What's next? Starting from January this year, from the perspective of the mother fund, we hope to build an entrepreneur community. We are communicating with leading technology media such as 36Kr and excellent GPs, hoping to build a good community to amplify the resources of mother fund investors. In September this year, we established the Shanghai Agent Community, an extension of the community. It is a non - profit organization, and we aim to make it open - source and purely non - profit.

As we know, a single ant is not very complex, but millions of ants can form a very complex structure. Neurons are very simple, but the connection of countless neurons forms human wisdom and civilization. So we firmly believe in the power of complex connections. By bringing together various resources, scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, mathematicians, physicists, life scientists, AI experts, etc., from different disciplines in the community for in - depth collaboration, we believe that this complexity and connection will generate new ideas.

We have four definitions for the future:

Future talent. Discovering future talent is our first task.

Future cognition. We need to precipitate the cognition of talents.

Future paradigm. We are exploring new paradigms in the community, especially for laboratory companies. We think that for some major and cutting - edge fields, the traditional financing model is not the best way. For example, raising tens of millions in the angel round and then fabricating a story to increase the valuation. We believe there should be a better approach.

Future connection. We firmly believe in the power of connection. So the most important task of our community is to connect people with different disciplinary backgrounds.

How to do it? We want to establish cognition through interviews. For example, next month, we will hold the first annual meeting of the Future Industry Fund and the Future Community. In the past month, we have sent out about 200 questionnaires. The questionnaire simply discusses one question. We sent it to scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors, asking them about their judgments on the future, such as what changes will occur in their fields in the next 3, 5, or even 10 years, and what changes will happen to talents and paradigms. We sent these questions to many people, including more than 20 academicians at the forefront of scientific research in China, many leading entrepreneurs in China, and about 30 - 40 partners from top - tier investment institutions in China. We will continue to do this. Through interviews, we can connect with a group of people with the most in - depth understanding in China.

In addition, through GPs, partners, and 36Kr, we will interview young people such as associate professors, assistant professors, doctoral students, and even undergraduates with in - depth knowledge in universities. We hope that through this way, on the one hand, we can establish an understanding of future directions, and on the other hand, we can connect with future entrepreneurs and scientists in China.

Our platform is very suitable for this task. Our team previously managed a mother fund at the Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Fund for 7 - 8 years and invested nearly 20 billion yuan. This team can connect the core resources of scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors in Beijing and Shanghai. So we want to continue this work in this open - source community. I think if we persist for two, three, or five years, we will be able to reach and cover a large number of the best and future entrepreneurs in China.

In addition, we will organize a lot of ecological activities in this community, which have been intensively carried out recently. Generally speaking, we want to build a community of communities. We won't operate the activities ourselves in a heavy - handed way, but we will empower various good community activities. On the one hand, we will empower investors. After all, with our 15 billion - yuan fund, it can be leveraged into 50 - 60 billion yuan in angel investment and early - stage funds, which is a large amount of capital. And most of the top - tier investment institutions in China are under our umbrella.

We will precipitate the information from the interviews into an Agent, a large - model Agent. We are developing this product, connecting these insights, people, external data, and many partners. It is a talent and cognition Agent. We will make this open - source in the future, and there will also be many community activities where entrepreneurs can support each other. Defining this product is a new thing.

We hope to continue our work in terms of talent, cognition, paradigm, and connection. We currently have a future industry fund and a community, and we are still exploring. In the future, we may establish a scientific non - profit foundation to support earlier - stage ideas, including the "What's Next" interviews we are conducting. These will be better ways to support early - stage innovation.

Thank you!